7 minute read
Kitchen Table Advisors
Gustatory Guidance
CORNUCOPIA
OF COLOR Cherry tomatoes from Oya Organics in Hollister.
BY Lou Fancher
With the fall harvest just a few action steps away from falling onto your family’s dinner plate, there’s no reason to miss out on the bounty of the Bay Area’s regional food shelf. Admittedly, the sheer abundance available can be overwhelming. The busy return to school, regulated work schedules and ongoing apprehension about virus variants might send customers scurrying to the local big-chain grocery store or placing a digital order without ever testing the ripeness of produce by hand or chatting in-person with a local farmer or rancher about their pride and practice: growing and bringing fresh food to you and your family.
Fortunately for people in the East Bay, Kitchen Table Advisors expedites finding the freshest fare and extending gustatory satisfaction with conscious and conscientious support for local farmers, ranchers and other food-andplant producers. KTA’s multi-racial, majority people of color and majority female team supports farmers and ranchers who collectively represent a more inclusive world of sustainable agricultural practices, as well as food and economic justice for children of immigrants, farmworkers, small »
PACK María Ana Reyes and her daughter Yessenia, of Narci Organic Farms in Salinas, packing produce boxes for the Tera Farm organic farm box program.
«business owners, organic farmers, healthcare workers and other people involved in the direct-to-consumers food chain. KTA forms alliances on macro and micro scale with organizations and individuals similarly focused on farmer power, equitable land ownership and governance, regenerative land stewardship, greater access for BIPOC farmers and ranchers to financial capital, and more.
KTA’s website poses the question: “What’s wrong with our food system?”
The answer provided is unequivocal: “According to the USDA, 50 percent of small farms don’t survive beyond their first five years and, out of the survivors, only 25 percent make it to 15 years. The industrialized food system depletes land without providing adequate nourishment, all while disempowering farmers and ranchers who seek to create environmental and social change. This leads to higher failure rates for the producers who nourish us—especially womxn, BIPOC and immigrants.”
If this message sounds heavy, and if a person simply seeks the best recommendation for where to buy fresh flowers from an urban market or the most immediate methods for stripping away cumbersome supply chain monsters—processors, packagers, shippers—KTA has answers for that, also. Enrolling in a communitysupported agriculture (CSA) subscription program provides one way to purchase local, seasonally fresh food directly from a farmer according to monthly or weekly delivery models. Shopping at farmers markets and small business markets allows people to discover and form allegiances with urban and rural farmers.
KTA covers all that and more.
In addition to issue-oriented study results and science- and data-backed facts, KTA’s Love Local page offers a user-friendly, regional guide to CSA and subscription programs, farmers markets, home delivery options and online links to small businesses. Subscribing to newsletters issued by the various organizations and cooperatives in close proximity to your home or across California—you can follow many of them that do not offer newsletters on social media—ensures that long-term support outlasts the fall harvest.
To get rolling, customers might visit any of a number of East Bay farmers’ markets located in these cities: Alamo, Sunday 9am to 2pm; Berkeley (Downtown), Saturday 10am to 3pm; Berkeley (N. Shattuck & Vine), Thursday 3–7pm; Berkeley (S. Adeline & 63rd), Tuesday 2–6:30pm (Oya Organics); Concord (Todos Santos Park), Tuesday 9am to 2pm & Thursday 4–8pm; Diablo Valley (Walnut Creek), Saturday 9am to 1pm; Fremont, Sunday 9am to 2pm; Kensington, Sunday 9am to 2pm; Oakland (Grand Lake), Saturday 9am to 2pm; Oakland (Temescal), Sunday 9am to 1pm. Check the days and times for seasonal updates/ alterations before heading out.
CSAs and other subscription programs in the East Bay include AIM Bounty Box, a weekly curated box featuring products from Blue House Farm and Sea to Sky Farm with pick-up in Oakland; Blue House Farm (Oakland); Bluma Farm, a floral CSA in Berkeley; Brisa Ranch (Oakland; add-on products available from Lunaria Flower Farm); FEED Cooperative FEED Bin, a Sonoma County–based farmer co-op providing product from Longer Table Farm, New Family Farm, True Grass Farms, Marin Roots Farm, Kibo Farm, Stony Point Strawberry Farm and Russian River Farm; Green Thumb Organics »
«Farms (Berkeley); Happy Acre Farm (Sunol, Livermore, Dublin, Pleasanton, Oakland); Lunaria Flower Farm (an herbal tea subscription program in Oakland); Oya Organics (Berkeley, Albany, Oakland); Mandela Produce, a CSA supporting BIPOC producers including Narci Organic Farms, Rojas Tepetitla Organic Farm and Catalán Family Farm, with pick-up locations in Oakland and San Leandro; Radical Family Farms (Oakland & Berkeley); Steadfast Herbs; Tera Farm, a customizable organic farm box featuring Narci Organic Farms, Los Pinos Organic, Oya Organics and Magaña Farms with pick-up locations in Oakland, Fremont, Berkeley and Castro Valley; and Urban Tilth, an organic-produce CSA that includes product from Narci Organic Farms with pick-up locations in Richmond, San Pablo and El Cerrito.
Many people in the Bay Area are familiar with home delivery organizations Good Eggs—featuring products from Fogline Farm, Blue House Farm, Oya Organics, Hikari Farms, Root Down Farm, JSM Organics, Sun Tracker Farm, Lunaria Flower Farm and Brisa Ranch—and Green Thumb Organics Farms, which delivers to Berkeley, Oakland and Richmond. But they might not know about the certified organic flowers, culinary herbs and plant starts available at Bluma Farms in Berkeley. A stunning array of flowers and plants, grown on the 2.5-acre plot founder Joanna Letz created in 2014 in Sunol and the newer 1/4-acre urban rooftop garden in Berkeley designed with Letz by Benjamin Fahrer, offer customers multiple options.
Letz, a Berkeley High alumni, studied history and human rights at Bard College. Captivated by farming apprenticeships and work performed while completing horticulture courses, Letz received a certificate in ecological horticulture at the UC Santa Cruz Farm & Garden Program and worked as the garden manager at Slide Ranch. In just seven years, Bluma Farms grew enough to hire a harvest manager and part-time field crew member in 2021.
Bluma offers full-service wedding packages or custom orders for special occasions that include made-to-order wedding boutonnieres, corsages, flower crowns (adult or child), Ceremony Altar Arrangements, Floral Chair Decor, Greenery Garlands, Low Centerpieces, Focal Arrangements, Cake Flowers, Bud Vase arrangements and more. A swift perusal of Letz’s portfolio shows a keen, artistic eye for color, texture, size and composition, and an eclectic sensibility that broadcasts organic indulgence and unleashed grace—but never one-sizefits-all or self-aware opulence.
With a visit to the KTA website, people in the East Bay craving a fall harvest road trip will find a breadth of listings for CSAs, markets, local farmers and ranchers, and home-delivery options in San Francisco, Yolo, Solano, Sacramento, Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Salinas, San Mateo Coast, the Peninsula and the South Bay.
VERY BERRY Farmer Rigo Bucio of Bucio Organic Farm harvesting strawberries at his farm in Salinas.
Visit www.kitchentableadvisors.org.
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